{"id":8851,"date":"2017-03-24T05:42:57","date_gmt":"2017-03-24T05:42:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=8851"},"modified":"2017-03-25T20:32:18","modified_gmt":"2017-03-25T20:32:18","slug":"what-the-heavens-gate-suicides-say-about-american-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/what-the-heavens-gate-suicides-say-about-american-culture\/","title":{"rendered":"What the Heaven’s Gate suicides say about American culture"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ben Zeller<\/a>, Lake Forest College<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Heaven\u2019s Gate<\/a> \u2013 also known as the \u201cUFO cult\u201d \u2013 burst into American consciousness 20 years ago this month, when, on March 26, 1997, law enforcement discovered 39 decomposing bodies in a San Diego, California mansion. \"The<\/p>\n

Each detail that emerged from the scene stunned a rapt public: Adherents had committed suicide in waves on March 22 and 23, ingesting a lethal mix of barbiturates and alcohol; they lay under purple shrouds, with five-dollar bills and rolls of quarters in their pockets; all wore simple dark uniforms and Nike tennis shoes. <\/p>\n

Bizarre as these details may seem, if you actually look at the group\u2019s beliefs and history, Heaven\u2019s Gate has far more in common with American culture than you might expect. <\/p>\n

In my book on Heaven\u2019s Gate<\/a>, I argue that the group drew from broad trends in American culture \u2013 religiosity, apocalyptic thinking and an interest in fusing science and religion. <\/p>\n

But one theme has become even more evident since I wrote the book. The group\u2019s embrace of conspiratorial thinking reflects a culture of conspiracy that has long existed in the margins of society \u2013 and has re-emerged at the center of American life<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Christian, New Age origins<\/h2>\n

At the time of the suicides, Heaven\u2019s Gate had been in existence for over two decades.<\/p>\n

It was founded in 1972 when two Texans, Bonnie Lu Nettles and Marshall Herff Applewhite, bonded over shared interests in alternative spiritual exploration, astrology and biblical prophecy. They came to believe that the Bible foretold an extraterrestrial rapture wherein some individuals would be saved from life on this planet and journey to what they called the \u201cNext Level,\u201d a physical realm in outer space where they would live as an immortal, perfected species of space aliens. They gained their first significant attention and converts in 1975 among alternative spiritual seekers in California and Oregon.<\/p>\n

Nettles and Applewhite drew from Christian sources, particularly prophetic and apocalyptic material<\/a>. They were also inspired by the New Age movement<\/a>, which emphasized meditation, diet and the channeling of spiritual beings. Like many religious people, members of Heaven\u2019s Gate sought salvation from what they considered a corrupt world.<\/p>\n

After Nettles died of cancer in 1985, the group\u2019s adherents increasingly rejected their earlier belief in what they called biological metamorphosis, wherein their human bodies would chemically transform into extraterrestrial forms. Instead, they now envisioned abandoning their human bodies on Earth and transferring their consciousnesses \u2013 through (unspecified) technological-spiritual means \u2013 into new extraterrestrial \u201cNext Level bodies.\u201d (This is roughly analogous to reincarnation.) <\/p>\n

Eventually, some members came to believe that they actually were space aliens \u2013 that they\u2019d taken on human forms to learn about life on our planet \u2013 though this belief appears to have not been universally shared. <\/p>\n

The paranoid style of American religion<\/h2>\n

It may come as a surprise that, until the suicides, Heaven\u2019s Gate attracted little outside attention.<\/p>\n

They didn\u2019t face government persecution, angry ex-members or professional anti-cultists eager to destroy them \u2013 all of which dogged other new and alternative religions like the Peoples Temple<\/a> (the group behind the Jonestown massacre) and the Branch Davidians<\/a> (the targets of the Waco siege).<\/p>\n

So what drove Heaven\u2019s Gate to consider collective suicide? <\/p>\n

In the final years of the group\u2019s existence, members came to believe in an elaborate conspiracy that leading governmental, religious and economic figures had colluded with a group of demonic extraterrestrials called \u201cthe Luciferians.\u201d According to Heaven\u2019s Gate members, these evil forces were all working in concert to cover up the existence of UFOs, and specifically a UFO \u201ccompanion\u201d that trailed the Hale-Bopp comet<\/a>, which came closest to Earth on March 22, the day the suicides began. <\/p>\n

The sort of conspiratorial thinking that Heaven\u2019s Gate adopted was nothing new. Their belief in government conspiracies and UFOs could be traced back to popular responses to the first \u201cflying saucer\u201d sightings<\/a> and the crash of an unknown object<\/a> in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. <\/p>\n

Religious studies scholar Joseph Laycock has written about how some aspects of the emerging UFO subculture blended scientific and supernaturalist theories<\/a>, bringing together religion and conspiratorial thinking. Likewise, historian David G. Robertson has documented how UFO conspiracy theories eventually merged with New Age religious thinking to create what he calls<\/a> \u201cUFO millennial conspiracism.\u201d Heaven\u2019s Gate was part of those trends.<\/p>\n

While Heaven\u2019s Gate emerged from ufological culture, they also engaged in a long and storied pattern of conspiratorial thinking by American religious and political movements, a relationship historian Richard J. Hofstadter explored<\/a> in his famous 1964 essay on the \u201cparanoid style of American politics.\u201d <\/p>\n

In the 19th century, this relationship was especially pronounced in a strand of American Protestantism<\/a> that envisioned an array of nefarious agents attempting to wrest American culture from the values \u2013 and control \u2013 of white, English Protestants. They initially targeted (sometimes violently) Catholic immigrants \u2013 who were neither Protestant nor English \u2013 and justified their actions with a blend of nativism and conspiratorial thinking. <\/p>\n

And it was this sort of conspiratorial thinking that suffused American political movements, whether it was McCarthyism<\/a> or the anti-Masonic movement<\/a>. Hofstadter wrote<\/a> that proponents of such ideas often felt \u201cdispossessed,\u201d that the country had been \u201ctaken away from their kind.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, many fear<\/a> that external agents, from Muslims to illegal immigrants, have eroded core American \u201cJudeo-Christian\u201d values. Perhaps as a result, we\u2019re now witnessing rising nativism, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia<\/a>. <\/p>\n

When conspiracy goes mainstream<\/h2>\n

Heaven\u2019s Gate also embraced what historian Michael Barkun calls<\/a> a \u201cculture of conspiracy,\u201d which divides the world between evil forces secretly conspiring among one another, true believers aware of the conspiracies and the mindless masses who operate without awareness of the truth. <\/p>\n

While Barkun focuses on the religious and cultural margins, today the same elements are arguably at work in American political discourse, whether it\u2019s talk of secret government wiretaps<\/a>, a deep state<\/a>, or cover-ups within the scientific community on topics ranging from vaccines<\/a> to climate change<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The adherents of Heaven\u2019s Gate wouldn\u2019t probably be drawn to these various political conspiracies, though they shared the belief that powerful forces colluded behind the scenes to hide the truth. In order to support their claims of the existence of extraterrestrials and UFO visitations, they embraced this conspiratorial logic. <\/p>\n

Twenty years ago, people laughed off the conspiracy theories that consumed the group and eventual led them to \u201copt out\u201d of the planet and commit suicide.<\/p>\n

But what happens when political leaders embrace a similar logic?<\/p>\n

Ben Zeller<\/a>, Associate Professor of Religion, Lake Forest College<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

This article was originally published on The Conversation<\/a>. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ben Zeller, Lake Forest College Heaven\u2019s Gate \u2013 also known as the \u201cUFO cult\u201d \u2013 burst into American consciousness 20 years ago this month, when, on March 26, 1997, law enforcement discovered 39 decomposing bodies in a San Diego, California mansion. Each detail that emerged from the scene stunned a rapt public: Adherents had committed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":8852,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[293,36],"tags":[1712,550,2063,479,364,2062,683],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8851"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8851"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8851\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8853,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8851\/revisions\/8853"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}